GB's men's curlers have qualified for the Winter Olympics semi-finals after beating Norway 6-5 in a tense play-off.

They will now face Sweden on Wednesday for a place in either the gold medal match, or the bronze game.

In a tight affair at the Ice Cube in Sochi, a superb final shot by skip David Murdoch, where he took out two Norway stones to score a double, saw Great Britain through.

Murdoch has finished fourth and fifth in the previous two Winter Olympics.

He said: "It will certainly go up there as one of my best shots ever. It's just tremendous; it's great to get into the semi-finals. We've had fantastic support through the week and that game was absolutely incredible. "

Analysis

"Sweden will be a very difficult game for the boys to play. I'm impressed how they've finished today - their demeanour will be more positive and I think they'll take that into tomorrow."

Norway, who had a 7-6 victory over GB in the round-robin stage, were the first to get a score on the board when they took one in the first end and they traded singles and blank ends until the fifth end where skip Thomas Ulsrud made two.

Murdoch hit back with two in the eighth end and an error from Norway saw them score only one in the ninth, thus leading 5-4 but handing GB the hammer in the crucial final end.

It looked as though Britain would have to settle for a single and take it into an extra end but Ulsrud made a mistake with his final stone.

That left Murdoch with a chance to score two, which he duly took to the cheers of delight from his team-mates and the British fans who were in the arena.

Murdoch added: "We weighed up our chances and we guessed we had a chance to win the game. We're not scared of playing shots like that because it was a chance of getting into the semi-finals.

"I just had to trust myself and have the courage to go for it. We never think about failure as a team, we only think about winning."

Sweden beat Great Britain 8-4 in the first match of the Games and have only lost one match so far.

But Murdoch was confident about his team's chances: "We've got a good record against Sweden - they've had an extra day's rest but you can see now we're really coming on to our game."

The men and the women were considered strong medal hopes before the Games as the women are the current world champions and the men world bronze medallists. Eve Muirhead's team face Canada at 10:00 GMT on Wednesday, with the men playing at 14:00 GMT, both live on the BBC.